Content and service providers generally employ multi-access servers to handle client communication or content requests, provide encryption or other security, and to track usage for billing content and services consumed by client devices. For high data applications and related content archiving, large capacity data storage devices are often utilized and configured to store this content, and in conjunction with the multi-access servers, permit access to subsets of the stored content. Common modern examples of online content or services include multimedia content such as movies, episode-based television content such as sitcoms, news programs, and other audio/video content, as well as audio content, and even real time interactive audio/video content, single-player or multiplayer games, as well as communication services, blogs, online forums, e-mail, text messaging, multimedia messaging, and so on.
In the past, network communications largely involved employing a client device for accessing information on a server (e.g., an FTP server), accessing an html page on the World Wide Web (web page) to view content posted to the web page, or the like. The information was downloaded and displayed onto a display of the client device for consumption by a user. Though network communications are known to have latency, data loss and other variable conditions that degrade quality or speed of traffic, redundancy is built into such communications to ensure that a requested resource will eventually be delivered to the client device. In a paradigm of downloaded data displayed on a device in which the acquiring an accurate copy of the data is not in doubt, the main performance factor affecting user satisfaction is time taken to download and display data, after sending a request. However, in a paradigm of real-time communications or streaming media, additional conditions affect consumer satisfaction.
In the case of electronic voice communications, whether analog or digital, sufficient signal clarity, noise reduction and bandwidth are involved in providing a clear, uninterrupted and continuous audio representation of a speaker's voice to a listener. Video conferencing presents a similar challenge, with higher resource consumption. To convey audio and video together synchronously, and with good clarity, sufficient network resources are involved to encode and transmit both audio and video data at a sufficient speed among network devices. The number of resources to transmit audio and video over a network is generally much more than for audio alone, particularly for higher resolutions of video (e.g., 720p resolution, 1080p resolution). Similarly, streaming media content, including streaming audio, streaming video, or streaming audio/video (e.g., an online video or cinematic movie), can involve relatively high bandwidth or data rates to deliver content to a client with sufficient continuity to provide an enjoyable playback experience. In the case of downloading a webpage, insufficient network resources to yield a fast data transfer can be merely a slight inconvenience, but where continuity of streaming media is involved, insufficient resources to provide audio/video continuity can significantly degrade user satisfaction with network-sourced content.
As illustrated with the data download paradigm to the streaming media content or real-time communication paradigm, changes in network communication technology can lead to new challenges in meeting customer expectations. Network communication technology is generally adapting and changing to meet these new expectations. These and other evolutions of communication technology drive much of modern research and development to keep up with consumer demand.